The "I" in IT

Since we have been very focused during this course on the T of the IT formula, I'd like to focus for a moment on the I. Information! Information traveling at lightening Speed!

As Leslie mentioned in her blog, we forget the degree to which we take the benefits of technology for granted. Living in Vermont, I have learned how quickly one can be plunged into living in the past, in the dark, completely incommunicado and with no water. All it takes is a strong wind to knock down a branch and we are reminded of our complete inefficiency without our powered tools. Once its back on, we return to our hyper-efficient little world that can reach the far end of the earth. And we may forget how wondrous it all is.

Well, in the last couple of weeks, even though I am accustomed to the instantaneity of e-mail communication and web pages pulling up in fractions of seconds, I had to marvel at how fast information can travel thanks to our digital age.

For the Fundamentals of Business Class, we had to consult various on-line financial information resources. Most have general information available to non-subscribers and more detailed information available to subscribers. One site claimed you could have a free trial of the unabridged information: all you had to do was fill a registration form to kick-off the free trial. Within an half-hour, I received a phone call from one of the company's agent offering to help me with my "business." I was actually astonished by the rapid turn around of information once my irritation at their shamelessly aggressive marketing approach wore off. Back in the pre-digital day, this "courtesy" phone call would have taken probably a couple of weeks from my initiating the process with an inquiry either by mail or by phone to the company, a request which would then perhaps had to have been processed before the appropriate agent would have called me. Astonishing how efficient the process has become.

Efficient to the point of being intrusive. In our digital age, boundaries of privacy are being redrawn and as a society in transition we can't help but be alarmed as the novelty catches us unaware. With a streak of malicious glee, I told the agent I was a penniless student with no business to be helped and the call came to an even quicker conclusion: she had just wasted a few extraordinarily precious minutes on a non-revenue dead-end!

The website that generated this call claims that students can have free access to the site. A few days later, I tried to subsribe to the free student site. Again like clockwork, the phone rang within an half-hour. In our conversation, the agent obliquely admitted there is no free student access. She essentially admitted it was false advertising. So the promise of a free trial is simply a ploy to get the user's information and to hound them. This show the ease with which certain practices can veer into the unethical. I may report the misleading advertising.

Despite my irritation, I must say I marveled at the technology that allowed information to not simply be transmitted but to be processed and acted upon with astonishing alacrity. I can understand the irresistible draw the potential of this technology has for big business.

Another encounter with the I in IT. Last week I finally got around to filling out my FAFSA form on-line. It had been on my list of things to do for week and I finally had all my ducks lined up to do it. Having filled one out last academic year, I knew the on-line process was easy and straightforward and expected it to to me an hour or so tops. So imagine my delight when I logged into my account to file a new form, I discovered that all the standard information which usually does not change from year to year had been remembered. All told, it took me a half hour to key in the variable information and it was done. I must say the website has excellent user interface which also contributed to the ease of filing the application.

This experience with FAFSA should not have surprised me: I am accustomed to buying books or other products on-line that remember my credit card number, address and such. But it did! I believe my memories of the paper application were my operating paradigm and not the internet. On one naive level, I simply didn't expect it to retain such a log of sensitive information. On a practical level, I was also preparing a new application - in my mind's eye this materializes as an actual form- and I didn't expect information I filed from last year would be available for the new year. But alas it was!

In both cases, the Financial and FAFSA websites, JavaScript was used to gather process the data.

Still Susceptible to Tech Surprises,
Laura